HOLINESS AS A NOTE OF THE CHURCH
The notion that the holiness of the Church has comparatively
little probative value in demonstrating that the religious society
over which the Bishop of Rome presides as the visible head is
actually God’s kingdom on earth has acquired an unfortunate but
undeniably widespread popularity among theological writers dur­
ing the past few years. The scholarly monograph, Les notes de
l’église dans l’apologétique catholique depuis la réforme, has con­
tributed a great deal to the diflfusion of this teaching. The author
of this monograph, the distinguished Dr. Gustave Thils, of the
Malines Major Seminary and of the University of Louvain, is
under the impression that the notes of the Church as a group
do not form the basis of any completely valid argument for the
authenticity of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, he believes that
each one of the notes, taken individually, is quite ineffective in
the form in which it appears in scholastic ecdesiology.

Dr. Thils examines the various descriptions of the Chinch’s
sanctity given by the great theologians since the time of the Car­
dinal John de Turrecremata. He observes that the earliest writers
under consideration contented themselves, for the most part, with
a listing of many different factors which go to constitute the
Church’s holiness. Then he notes that, in their anxiety to limit
themselves strictly to those elements which might serve in the
visible note of holiness, the later theologians tended to restrict their
discussions to the possession of indubitable means of sanctity by
the Church, to the holiness of the members of the Church, and,
finally, to the attestation of that holiness, at least in the cases of the
Saints, by authentic miracles. According to Dr. Thils, the literature
of Catholic theology itself has come, for all practical purposes at
least, to minimize or even to reject the probative value of these
elements as factors in a genuine note of the Church.
It would seem, however, that Dr. Thils’ conclusions are motivat­
ed by a certain basically unscientific prejudice of his own more
powerfully than by the evidence he has gathered from the writings
of the classical apologists and ecclesiologists. In describing the
452

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HOLINESS AS A NOTE OF THE CHURCH

453

way in which an author of the twentieth century would deal with
the writings on the nota sanctitatis in sixteenth-century theological
works, the distinguished Louvain writer states that the modem
anthor would reject a great deal of the material to which his prede­
cessors appealed.

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He would suppress the holiness, in the sense bf consecration to God,
because it is not visible. That [holiness] which comes from the pres­
ence of the Spirit in Catholics [would be rejected] because heretics
of good faith share it with the Catholics. That [holiness] which the
Church possesses by reason of its founders, Christ and the Apostles
[would not be considered] since the Protestants are counted as Christ­
ians. Finally, that [holiness] produced by the sacraments, the laws,
and even the morality [would not be considered] since these elements
are common to the Orthodox Church and to the Catholic Church.1

It is, moreover, Dr. Thils’ idea that “the adage extra Ecclesiam
nvlla solus, interpreted strictly in the sixteenth century, slowly
takes on the more tolerant meaning of extra Ecclesiam nulla sanc­
titas” in the writings of subsequent theologians.2 He is also con­
vinced that, after the writings of Perrone a century ago, the mean­
ing of this axiom was revised so as to deny merely the existence of
'‘eminent, permanent, and widespread holiness” outside the limits
of the true Church of Jesus Christ3

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In other words, Dr. Thils’ difficulties about the note of holiness
stem, in some measure, from a failure to realize the essential truth
® the writings of the classical ecclesiologists, the truth that the
visible Catholic society is actually the kingdom of God on earth,
the one social reality really necessary for salvation with the necessity both of means and of precept. This is the conclusion to which
the argument from the notes of the Church leads directly. A man
who has lost sight of the fact that this conclusion is literally true
will certainly not be in a position to evaluate the various theological demonstrations which lead only to it. A man who can per-

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lLes notes de l’église dans l’apologétique catholique depuis la réforme
(Faris: Desdée, De Brouwer, 1937), p. 126.

ibâi.,.p. 138.
3C£ ibid., p. 149.

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

suade himself that tolerance or any factor other than truth itself
can have any function in the interpretation of a Catholic dogma
can hardly be expected to appreciate the theological proofs which
show that this statement or dogma is really contained in the deposit
of Christian revelation.
One of the most brilliant modem apologies for the Catholic
Church, Dr. Martin Jugie’s Où se trouve le christianisme intégral,
is affected and somewhat lessened in value by the author’s adop­
tion of the position previously taken by Dr. Thils with reference
to the notes of the Church, and particularly with reference to the
note of holiness. Dr. Jugie agrees that real sanctity, or the sanc­
tity of means, personal sanctity, or the holiness of its members, and
charismatic sanctity, or the witness of miracles, observable in the
life of the Catholic Church as it exists in our own time, conspire
to manifest this society as the religious organization founded and
maintained by Christ Our Lord. He makes, however, the very
significant and valuable observation that a “dynamic sanctity, or
zeal in utilizing the means of sanctification confided to the Church,
resulting in a fruitfulness in all kinds of good works,” 4 should be
added to the other aspects of the Church’s holiness in order to
make this note of the true Church function properly. Unfortu­
nately, Dr. Jugie will not ascribe any practical probative force to
the argument from the note of holiness, even after he has shown the
existence of an aspect of that holiness too often neglected in con­
temporary writing.5
In reality, it is quite unscientic for a theologian to deny the
effectiveness of the Church’s holiness precisely in its function as a
note or mark of God’s kingdom on earth. Indeed, from the scrip­
tural point of view, the claims of holiness in this respect are superior
to those of the other properties of Our Lord’s society which are
commonly employed as notes. In the New Testament itself there
is ample evidence that the company of Christ’s disciples was estab­
lished as an organization manifestly catholic and apostolic. Never­
theless we do not find any assertion in the New Testament directly
4 Où se trouve le christianisme intégral? Essai de démonstration catho­
lique (Paris: Lethiellenx, 1947), p. 261.
5 Cf. ibid., pp. 261 f. -

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HOLINESS AS A NOTE OF THE CHURCH

455

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and immediately announcing that the city of God in this world is
recognizable as such in function of its catholicity and apostolicity.
In the New Testament there is direct and explicit teaching to the
effect that the Church’s unity is a true sign, but it is presented
directly as a motive of credibility, rather than as a genuine note.
Our Lord prayed to His Father that His disciples might be
one ‘ that the world may believe (mvTwnj) that thou hast sent

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me,”’and also “that the world may know (γινωσιφ) that thou
hast sent me and hast loved them, as thou hast also loved me.” 7
It is true, of course, that the Christian revelation itself patently
recognizes unity, catholicity, and apostolicity as true marks of the
Church of Jesus Christ on earth. The monuments of Christian
tradition offer ample and unassailable evidence in this direction.
Yet the New Testament itself gives no direct and explicit testimony on this particular point.

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In the case of the Church’s holiness, however, the situation is
quite different. Our Lord explicitly admonished His followers that

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“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have
love one for another.”8 This mutual affection within the true
Church of Jesus Christ is the mandate Our Lord made incumbent
upon the society as a whole. “A new commandment I give unto
you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also
love one another.’9 Thus the affection of supernatural charity
within the company of the disciples, the affection of which the love
of Christ for His followers is at once the cause and the exemplar,
stands in the divine teaching as a sign whereby the disciples of
Our Lord are to be recognized as such by the world at large.

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Now it is quite obvious that the possession of charity was never
meant to be either the sign or the condition of an individual’s mem-

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bership in the company of the disciples. The whole tenor of the
parables of the kingdom is to the effect that God’s household in
this world, the society of the disciples of Christ on earth, will con-

I

tain a certain number of sinners, people devoid of charity, until
the end of time. Hence, according to divine revelation itself, a man
can be and can remain a member of the Church militant without
•ΛΑ», 17:21.

T John, 17:23.

» John, 13-.35.

9 John, 13:34.

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having the affection of charity for his fellow-Christians which Our
Lord commanded him to possess and to exercise. Such a person
is an unworthy member of the ecclesia Christi. He cuts himself
off from the supernatural life of charity, the perfective element in
the spiritual bond of unity of the Church. Nevertheless, until the
final purification at the time of the last judgement, such persons
can and must be counted among the real members of the Church.

The affection of mutual charity, then, is manifested in the Gospel
according to St John as a sign marking, not the individual member
of the Christian community, but the community itself. All men are
to realize that these men are the true disciples of Jesus Christ
because of the evident existence, within the activity of the com­
pany as a whole, of a strong mutual charity. In other words, the
corporate conduct of the group, clearly manifested before the world,
is to be such that right-thinking men can recognize this society as
the true company of Our Lord’s disciples.
Now sanctity, by its very definition, constitutes an abiding at­
tachment to God and a stable aversion to all that is opposed to
Him. We must not allow ourselves to forget that, as the human
race has actually been disposed or ordered by God Himself, there is
no firm and abiding attachment to God and opposition to sin other
than that which is connected with the virtue of supernatural charity.
Furthermore, charity is distinctly one virtue. Hence it is one and
the same virtue which brings about a supernatural love of friend­
ship for God and a genuine supernatural affection for our fellow
men, and primarily for those who are most effectively our “neigh­
bors,” our brothers and sisters within the household of God which
is the true Church of Jesus Christ. Thus, in teaching that His
disciples would be recognizeable as such by reason of their mutual
charity, Our Lord brought out the basic truth that holiness would
serve as a note of His company on earth.

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It is most important to note, however, that in the statement by
Our Lord and in the teachings of classical ecclesiology, it is the
corporate charity, the communal holiness, of the Church which is
held up as an indication of this society’s identity. Unfortunately,
perhaps in an attempt to reply most directly to heretical objections,
this central and essential aspect of the kingdom of God’s holiness

HOLINESS AS A NOTE OF THE CHURCH

457

has been somewhat neglected among recent theologians. In mod­
em times the scholastic treatment of the Church’s holiness or
charity has tended to center around the spiritual status of individual
members of the Church. The Church is described as manifestly
holy because of the existence within its membership of innumer­
able persons who lead holy lives, and of an ever-present but less
numerous group remarkable for extraordinary or heroic sanctity.
These theologians have worked to show that the Church possesses
in itself authentic and recognizable principles of holiness, which
make it evident that the spiritual perfection of its members flows
from causes existent within the company itself. And, to further
or to complete their argument, they point to the fact that the exis­
tence of heroic charity, in the cases of the canonized Saints at least,
is attested by the existence of true and undeniable miracles.
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All of this, of course, is perfectly true. Nevertheless, the sanctity
d the individual, or even of many individuals, is not the central
dement in the Church’s note of holiness, and it should not be
treated as such. The reality, the charity or holiness of which is
meant primarily to function as an indication of the identity of the
tme company of Our Lord’s disciples, is the society itself, not
simply a group of its members. The Church exists and acts as a
holy society, and its corporate sanctity is readily observable. It is
precisely this corporate holiness which is directly and primarily
meant to show the character of this society as the true company of
Christ on earth.

i

The company of Christ’s disciples is, according to Our Lord’s
own teaching, endowed with a manifest and dynamic corporate holioess. This sanctity is quite evident in the social activity of the
Catholic Church, and in the activity of the Catholic Church alone.
The basic communal activity of the Church is the Eucharistic
Sacnfice, around which all its sacramental system revolves. The
Eudianstic Sacrifice is the effective expression of tire Church’s

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prayer, or petition to God. The central prayer of the Church is to
found in the petitions of the Mass and of the other liturgical
bxits. These petitions, in their turn, are expressions of the intenlions or desires of the Church in this world. The recognized and
Authentic teaching of the Church, through the statements of its

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hierarchy, constitute the interpretations of these petitions. Hence
we can seek, in the petitions of the Mass and in the official teaching
of the Church, the expression of the charity or holiness which,
according to the explicit statement of Christ, was to constitute
an indication of this society’s status as the true company of His
disciples.

Despite the fact that many liturgies are in use throughout the
religious society presided over by the Bishop of Rome, the rite of
the Roman Missal can be accepted as typical of all of them, as far
as the quality and the direction of the Church’s petitions and in­
tentions are concerned. The complete holiness of the petitions
embodied in this ceremony is immediately apparent. In the canon
of the Mass, the Church begs God that its sacrifice should be
acceptable to Him, and that God may grant it, with its universal
visible ruler and the bishop of the individual congregation for which
the sacrifice is being offered, the divine peace, protection, and
guidance. It begs that these blessings may be given to all the
faithful throughout the world, and especially to the members of the
individual congregation gathered together for the sacrificial offer­
ing. The prayer of the Mass describes the Eucharistic act as
something offered for the redeeming of the souls of the faithful
and for the hope of their safety and salvation.
The Church is mindful that it offers the sacrifice together with
the blessed in heaven, with the hope and desire that the people
co-operating in this act may be the associates of the elect forever.
In the act of consecration itself, the priest makes the words of
Christ his own, and professes that his offering is made in com­
memoration of Christ, as He has Himself commanded. Thus, beg­
ging that the souls of the faithful departed may enter into their
eternal rest, the Church on earth pleads that its members may enter
into the Church triumphant, and may ever be joined in union with
Our Lord.
The basic intention or desire of the Church, manifested in the
basic prayer of the Mass, is manifestly the motivating intention of
sanctity or charity itself. The Church seeks the ultimate good of its
children, the attainment of eternal and supernatural life. The
members of the Church, participating in the offering of the

HOLINESS AS A NOTE OF THE CHURCH

459

Church’s sacrifice, express the most perfect and effective mutual
charity by desiring and working for this greatest of benefits in one
another’s favor. Thus the Church manifests an efficacious desire
for God’s supernatural glory. It presents itself as an agency sin­
cerely loving God with a supernatural love of friendship. Thus,
from this fundamental point of view, it stands before the observer
as uniquely a holy institution or company, endowed with the sanc­
tity of Christ Himself.
It may be objected, of course, that there are other religious
societies in which the Christian Mass is offered validly, and that
thus the testimony of the Mass in favor of the Catholic Church is
of no demonstrative value. Such an objection, however, misses the
essential point of the matter under consideration. The Church is
manifestly a holy society precisely because its corporate activity is
clearly in line with the intention expressed in the Mass. The other
religious organizations, in which the Mass is offered validly though
illicitly, show no such harmony with the basic desire of the Eucha­
ristic prayers in their corporate activity.
We must not lose sight of the fact that it is the corporate activity
of the Church, and this alone, which is under consideration at this
juncture. It is precisely this official and corporate activity which
the world can recognize and compare with the official and corpo­
rate activity of other religious groups. No one can pretend to
have any clear and perfectly certain knowledge about the intimate
spiritual status of an individual. Anyone, however, can readily see
and evaluate the intentions and the activity of a society, once the
authentic documents and history of that society have been made
available to him.

The official corporate activity of the Catholic Church is evidently
a work of charity and holiness. Primarily the Church is a teaching
organization. In its doctrinal mission, the Church manifests to
anyone willing to examine the matter a clear and perfect teaching
about God and about the redemption of the human race. It un­
compromisingly sets itself against sins, even those which appeal
most to the perverted taste of a generation or a nation. It holds
this position despite the fact that many of its own members take
umbrage at its teaching. It resists the temptation to overlook some

WWM I

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

offences, on the grounds that an insistence upon the right would
bring it into difficulties it can ill afford to meet.
The Church preaches a love for all men, and commands its own
children to regard one another as brothers, even in times when such
a doctrine runs manifestly counter to the popular tendencies of the
day. As a social unit, it evidently acts as the agent of Christ on
earth. The corporate activity of the Church is in line with both
its prayer and its teaching. Its charity is manifest over the whole
world through its practice of the spiritual and corporal works of
mercy.

This social sanctity of the Church is all the more remarkable
in view of the fact that, during all the time of its earthly sojourn,
it is composed of both good and evil members. The corporate
work of the Church is violently opposed always by the tendencies
and even the activities of some of its members, sometimes by the
activities of those placed in authority within the Church itself.
The Church preaches and insists upon charity, justice, and grati­
tude even when the contrary vices are manifest in the lives of many
of its own children. It is precisely this manifestation of holiness
in a society composed partially of evil men that makes the Church
a miracle of the social order and thus an incontrovertible witness
to the authenticity of its own message as divine revelation.
The corporate holiness of the Catholic Church stands out in
still greater relief when we compare the conduct of this society
with that of rival religious bodies in the world today. It would
be blasphemous to designate as holy the activity of an organization
or set of organizations slavishly subservient to the atheistic policy
of communist governments. It would likewise be ridiculous to
designate as holy or charitable the corporate conduct of religious
societies which have, for all intents and purposes, abandoned all
concern for the accurate teaching of divine revelation, and which
have degenerated into merely semi-political social groups whose
only common concern is that of unrelenting and malicious opposi­
tion to everything Catholic.

The note of holiness, in function of which the Church is recog­
nizable as the true company of Our Lord’s disciples, is, then, to be
found from an examination of the corporate activity of the Church,

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HOLINESS AS A NOTE OF THE CHURCH

viewed in itself and then considered in the light of the corporate
activity of rival religious bodies. From this consideration and
from no other can the argument from the note of holiness be
effectively and accurately treated. Obviously, if we restrict ourselves to an examination which centers around the holiness of individual members, we are in a realm in which scientific demonstration
is quite ineffective. It is, in the last analysis, impossible to say with
absolute certainty whether or not any individual man, Catholic
or non-Catholic, is actually in the friendship of God here and now.
Indeed, try as we will, we cannot be absolutely sure of even our
own spiritual status. The goodness or the evil of a corporate activity, however, is something which we can readily recognize. And it
is precisely this manifest sanctity of the Catholic Church in its
communal activity which must be used as a basis for an effective
proof from the note of holiness.

This concept of the Church’s holiness as an evident argument in
its own favor is at once more difficult and more traditional than
that notion which centers around the holiness of individual members within the Church. It is more difficult because the very extension and perfection of the Church’s corporate activity along
liturgical, doctrinal, and charitable lines demand a painstaking and
detailed description if the demonstration is to stand out in all of its
effectiveness. It is, however, more traditional because this manner
of treating the holiness of the Church is more in conformity with
the approach of the classical ecclesiologists. A few examples will
serve to show how the earlier scholastics dealt with the teaching on
the holiness of the Church.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Expositio super symbolo aposto~
lorum, limited himself to a brief discussion of the principles of the
Church’s sanctity. He mentions the fact that the faithful are
washed with the blood of Christ, anointed with the spiritual anoint­
ing which is the grace of the Holy Ghost, and recipients of the
Blessed Trinity, dwelling within them as in a temple.10
The fourteenth-century ecdesiologist, James of Viterbo, offers a
much more complete treatment of this quality of the Church. In
10Cf. the Opuscula omnia, edited by Fr. Peter Mandonnet, O.P. (Paris:
Lethielleux, 1927), IV, 379 ff.

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

his De regimine Christiana he teaches that the Church is holy
because it is preserved immaculate from sin by the grace of the
sacraments, preserved from the uncleanness of ignorance and error
by the sacred teaching, and because it is most securely dedicated
to the worship and service of God. He refers always to the Church
as a social unit, rather than merely to some of its members.11

The same tendency is observable in the teaching of the Cardinal
John de Turrecremata. In his Summa de ecclesia Turrecremata,
like James of Viterbo before him, made use of the definitions of
sanctity offered in the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius and St. Isi­
dore of Seville. Both insisted that the Catholic Church conforms
entirely to both of these definitions. Turrecremata teaches, further­
more, that the Catholic Church must be recognized as holy by rea­
son of the worship it offers to God, because it is endowed with all
the supernatural virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost, because it is
ruled by what are obviously the most holy laws, because of its
doctrine, abounding in sanctity, because of its sacraments and other
means of salvation, and, finally, by reason of its relation to the
Church triumphant in heaven.12 All of this teaching refers directly
to the corporate activity of the Church rather than merely to the
conduct and status of certain individual members. And, it is inter­
esting to note that while no one of the three authors we have
named uses the expression “note of the Church,” all treat of the
Church’s holiness in the manner of a note, since they all insist that
the true Church can be distinguished from the ecclesia malignantium
precisely by reason of that holiness.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent, on the other hand,
makes no effort to utilize the holiness of the Church directly as a
note. It teaches that the Church is holy because of the fact that
it is something consecrated to God, because it has Our Lord as its
Head, and because it has the true sacrifice and the sacraments.13

11 Cf. Le plus ancien traité de Féglise: Jacques de Viterbe, De regimine
Christiano. Étude des sources et édition critique par H.-X. Arquiliière
(Paris: Beauchesne, 1926), pp. 129 ff.

13Cf. the Summa de ecclesia (Venice, 1561), pp. 11' ff.
«Cf. Pars I, art 9, XVII.

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HOLINESS AS A NOTE OF THE CHURCH

463

St. Robert Bellarmine appeals directly to the sanctity of the
Church’s doctrine in his demonstration per viam notarum.1*
Incidentally, Dr. Thils is gravely in error when he speaks of
this particular section of St. Robert’s De notis ecclesiae. He writes
that the prince of the ecclesiologists eliminated the sanctity of
doctrine from consideration as a factor in a proof from the notes
of the Church, and he explains it by the statement that “in refuting
the first note of the Protestants,—the possession of the pure doc­
trine—the Roman professor categorically refused to recognize this
as a criterion of truth, since, he assures us, it can also be found
in false churches.”15 Thils neglected to add St. Robert’s highly in­
teresting comment, to the effect that the pure doctrine is found in
all dissident groups “at least according to their own account.”1®
He rightly rejected the probative force of any argument taken from
the purity of the faith as a note of the Church. Indeed, the posses­
sion of the faith in all of its purity by the Church is something
which the proof from the notes seeks to establish.
The sanctity of the teaching in the actually existent Catholic
Church is another matter altogether. Far from repudiating or
eliminating this argument, St. Robert actually appeals to it as the
eighth note of the true Church of Jesus Christ.
In his Controversies, Francis Sylvius speaks, of six as­
pects of the Church’s sanctity. The Church is a holy society be­
cause it is consecrated to God, because it is pure and free from any
crime (obviously not in each one of its individual members, but
only in its corporate reality and activity), because it has a holy
worship and laws, because it has the Source of sanctity within itself,
because it has Christ as its Head, and, finally, because it persists
firmly in this attachment to God.11 In proving that this sanctity is a
real note of the Church, Sylvius, like St Robert Bellannine before
him, appeals primarily to the evident holiness of doctrine within the
Catholic Church.18

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• ls Cf. Thils, op. cit., p. 131.
18 Cf. De notis ecclesiae, cap. I.
17 Cf. Controversiae, Ub. Ill, <1- 2, act. &
™ CL ibid., art. 7.

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The holiness of the Church in its corporate activity is thus a
doctrine based upon the best traditional teaching in scholastic
ecclesiology. Through the use of this factor, it is possible to con­
struct an adequate demonstration of the Church’s authenticity per
viam notarum. The sight of less effective methods employed in
certain contemporary text-books should not bring our theologians
to reject the validity of the proof as such, but should motivate
them to reconstruct this demonstration along traditional and effec­
tive lines. ,
Joseph Clifford Fenton
The Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.

St. Augustine: Preacher

of

God's Truth

about

His Church

For Augustine, the Church is a sign, by means of which God wills
that men should know him, a sign lifted up in the midst of the nations.
At the same time that it determines what we are to believe, it serves
us as a reason for believing.

For Augustine, the Catholica is not only great with its historical and
social greatness, great by reason of its authority in the realm of truth,
great in the holiness of its Saints; it is not only an organic unity, a
unity that is necessary and commanded by God; it is the worker of
our salvation. The invisible Christ works through the instrumentality
of its hands, speaks with its lips, sanctifies with its sacraments.

Augustine wishes to reduce religion to two loves, the love of God in
heaven and the love of the Church on earth. God is the Father. The
Church is the mother. We love God as our Father and the Church as
our mother.
—Msgr. Pierre Batiffol, who died Jan. 13, 1929, in the posthumous work
Cathedra Petri (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1938), p. 19.

Answers to Questions
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RESTRICTION OF DISCRETIONARY POWER OF
CONFESSORS
Question : What is to be said of the following custom in a clerical
religious community : Before a priest is appointed a regular conlessor of the students, he must promise in writing that he will observe certain rules in hearing their confessions. In these rules it is
stipulated that no boy who has ever had illicit carnal relations will
be permitted to make profession in the institute or to receive Holy
Orders—even if the sin took place only once. Again, it is decreed
that the same procedure is to be followed in the case of a boy who
at any time in his life attempted to seduce another person to a sin
against chastity. Furthermore, these same rules prescribe that a
clerical novice is not to be allowed by the confessor to take the
vows if even once in the course of the preceding year he was guilty
of a grave external sin of impurity ?

Ansiver: It is difficult to see how the superiors of this institute
are justified in demanding such a promise from those appointed to
hear the confessions of the students and novices. Certainly, it is
the wish of the Church that the discretionaty power of the con­
fessor shall not be unduly limited. Thus, the Code of Canon Law
lays down in detail the conditions that must be fulfilled before a
bishop may reserve certain sins, and goes on to prescribe that the
number of such reserved cases shall not be more than three or four
(Can. 895, 897). The purpose of this legislation is to check the
imprudent zeal of any bishop who might wish to retain for himself
too much of the power w’hich normally should be exercised by the
confessor, acting on his own judgment. Now, surely, the limi­
tations on the confessor’s judgment involved in the custom described
by the questioner far exceed those which a bishop may impose. The
former render mandatory the exclusion of a young man from the
holy state to which he aspires even for a single sin which may have
been committed years before, involves no scandal, has been for­
given and atoned for, and has left no noticeable inclination toward
a repetition of the act. A similar grave limitation is that which
commands the confessor not to allow a young man to make religious
profession if he has fallen only once in the course of the previous
year..
While it is vitally important that candidates to the priesthood and
to the religious life prove their ability to preserve their chastity

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